Narratio is a global platform for youth empowerment through creative expression, publishing content from over 18 countries across three continents.
Narratio is a global platform for youth empowerment through creative expression, publishing content from over 18 countries across three continents.
All in Poetry
Like women's bodies, the Ocean is a feminized body and space. There is so much movement in feminized spaces and bodies, but so much restriction. This project is one that looks at feminine bodies in and of the Pacific Ocean, and that creates something creative while also commenting critically on female/feminized bodies and issues of suppression, sensuality, and freedom, etc.
Where are those who cursed us?
Those afraid we threatened their wealth?
Come on and see!
Do you dare to look at this scene?
Better avert your eyes.
Hide and lock yourselves in your homes!
We are silent so that you hear us.
“So next time I hear someone say that You Can’t put a Price on Memories
I’ll walk in an empty room so that they can hear the clinking of the broken fragments of my heart
Because the navy blue string from my couches back home that sewed the pieces together was taken from me when my parents finally handed over the keys”
In my stream of thoughts, script sews itself into half of it
and still, I find myself on the outskirts of two worlds
since I’ve left girlhood. Tried to build a bridge with my back
across the Atlantic, stretched my body as far as the skin
on my limbs would grant it, but found myself poured over prayer
mats still asking the right questions in the wrong languages.
Hoping God translates this.
Feels like just last May,
my father didn’t celebrate the days of revelation.
Ramadan was served on a full dinner plate
since he works too late to entertain
the culture America finds so intimidating.
Always loved the soft, sunstained, warm body
of my grandmother, the textured scripture
she sprinkles over holy beads. Always loved her too much,
or maybe just loved how much she loved me,
to ask if she’d ever grow tired of folding
her body for men, for religion, for all things in power
under heaven -- the things we’ve been told to cling to as women
to ensure we’ll never be free again or without a fastened knot to someone else.
